Studies in Virgil

'There is through all art a filiation. If you see a great master, you will
always find that he used what was good in his predecessors, and that it was
this which made him great. Men like Raphael do not spring out of the
ground. They took their root in the antique and in the best which had
been done before them. Had they not used the advantages of their time
there would be little to say about them.' -- GoETHE, Conversations with Eckermann, Jan. 4, 1827.

'Among the deadliest of poetical sins is imitation.' -- CARLYLE, Essay on the
State of German Literature.

SOMEWHERE about the year 400 A.D. a great educational
work was composed by the scholar Macrobius. He gathered
up all that he considered best in the current criticism of Virgil, and, with some other cognate matter -- literary,
archaeological, and physiological reminiscences -- he constructed a long dialogue. The characters who take part
in the conversation are some of the leading men in the
pagan society of the time, with a few scholars and savants,
and in particular Servius. The time is the festival of the
Saturnalia, from which the book takes its name, and the
scene is laid from day to day in the houses of Praetextatus, Flavian, and Symmachus, the chief political leaders of the
pagan party. A large part of the dialogue is given up to
the criticism of Virgil, but we might be over-estimating the
seriousness of Roman society at the time if we believed
that the guests enjoyed equally the whole of the discussion.
The scholar Eustathius, for example, has spoken of Virgil's
debt to Homer, and Avianius (the father of Symmachus)
asks him to continue and enumerate all that Virgil has
borrowed, 'for what could be more delightful than to hear
two supreme poets saying the same thing.' 'Give me a
copy of Virgil then,' says Eustathius, 'because as I go from
passage to passage I shall remember Homer's verses more
easily.' The book is duly fetched by a slave, and Avianius

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